and truer to the spirit of that which they interpreted.  They allegorized when an allegory was invited, whereas Philo and his school often forced their philosophical meanings in face of the clear purport of the text, and without regard to the Hebrew.  In the one case allegory was a genuine development, and might have been adopted by the original prophet:  in the other, it was reconstruction; and the artificial un-Hebraic character of the Hellenistic commentary was one of the causes of its disappearance from Jewish tradition.  While the Palestinian allegorists based their continuous philosophical interpretation upon the Wisdom Books, they, at the same time, looked for secondary meanings wherever opportunity offered, and found lessons in letters and teachings in names.  An early school of commentators was actually known as [Hebrew:  dorsh rshomot][311] or interpreters of signs, and their method was by examination of the letters of a word, or by comparison of different verses, to explore homilies.  For instance, the verse, “And God showed Moses a tree” (Exod. xvi. 26), by which he sweetened the waters at Marah, symbolized, by a play on the word [Hebrew:  vyvrhu],[312] that God taught Moses the Torah, of which it is said, “She is a tree of life” (Prov. iii. 18).  Another happy example of this method occurs in the sixth section of the Pirke Abot, where the names in the itinerary, [Hebrew:  mmtna nhlial, vmnhlial bmot] (Numb. xxi. 19), are invested with a spiritual meaning.  Whoever believes in the Torah, it is written, shall be exalted, as it is said, “From the gift of the law man attains the heritage of God, and by that heritage he reaches Heaven.”

In this passage of Palestinian allegorism, it may be noticed that the Torah is regarded as a spiritual bond between man and God, and as a sort of intermediary power between them.  This feature is almost as frequent in the Midrash as the Logos-idea in Philo, so that it may be said that rabbinic theology finds an idealism in the Torah which corresponds to the idealism of the Philonic Word.  It is expressed, no doubt, naively and fancifully, even playfully, without attempt at philosophical deductions.  It is informed by the same spirit as the Alexandrian allegory, but it is essentially poetical and impulsive, and set forth in mythical personification, not in deliberate metaphysics.  The Torah to the rabbis was the embodiment of the Wisdom which the writer of Proverbs had glorified, and it takes its prerogatives.  God gazes upon the Torah before He creates the world.[313] The Torah, though the chief, is not, however, the only object of rabbinic idealism.  God and His name, it is said, alone existed before the world was created,[314] and in a Talmud legend relating the birth of man, the ideal power is identified with Truth, which, like the Logos, is pictured as God’s own seal.

  “From Heaven to Earth, from Earth once more to Heaven
  Shall Truth, with constant interchange, alight
  And soar again, an everlasting link
  Between the world and Sky.”